Sharing our lives as a complex family

Memory Lane﻿

When writing “Hope Deferred” I relived much of Ben’s tricky medical and developmental history. In my writing, I highlighted many of the people who crossed our paths during these 10 years and made an impact on our lives with kindness. The simple, often brief interactions were powerful. During dark times, they were steadfast sources of light, and darkness cannot endure in the light.

Kindness is simple. It takes no special skill or education, it’s a basic human capacity. It costs absolutely nothing, and often benefits the giver as much as the recipient.
Ben is back in the hospital, and in the past few days a few of those everyday heroes have come back across our paths as we seem to have made our way full circle and are back in a place of unknown illness and the strain of navigating the diagnostic process.

I’ve told a couple of them about their roles in my book, in our lives. What they have meant to us as we traverse this strange land over and over. I didn’t anticipate this when I wrote about them, but my heart bursts with gratitude for the opportunity to tell my benefactors just how powerful their altruism was and is.

Kindness matters. Whether you’re the doctor, the teacher, the street sweeper or the code writer or the mom, going about your business being kinder than necessary matters. It’s important.

We’ve experienced tragedy these past few days and people are reeling. We’re wondering how to move forward in a world where a gifted and beautiful musician is killed while greeting fans, where people enjoying a night out are massacred, and where an alligator snatches a child and his parents are thrown under the bus by the masses. I don’t claim to know how to legislate gun violence or hate crimes, but I do know that love matters. That caring more than necessary, smiling, stepping in to lend a hand, and just showing compassion makes a difference. Compassion does indeed evaporate darkness.